I’ve finally gotten around to looking more closely at the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report, released last week. The report ranks 133 countries on the basis of 12 measures of an economy’s competitiveness: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation.

Russia’s overall rank dropped from 51 to 63, but as the country highlights discussion makes clear, this overall rank masks a more telling underlying story: